


Who Killed John Farley? - Part Three of the John Farley Series

by Floydman



Series: John Farley Series [3]
Category: Obduction (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 17:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16858300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floydman/pseuds/Floydman





	Who Killed John Farley? - Part Three of the John Farley Series

**Statement by Caroline Farley at the Hunrath Town Council Meeting on 17178 AH**

Hello, everyone. Thank you for allowing me this time to address you today. I know you've all been very busy. I've been busy myself. Figuring out how to spread out into this new world with the other species is no small undertaking. But I've found some spare time for a side project of my own.

Most of you will remember the tragic passing of my father, John Farley, just a couple of years ago. Unfortunately there wasn't too much time to investigate, what with everything that happened. The immediate signs pointed to an accident, but it became increasingly clear that the mofangs had a hand in it.

Given that they had begun acting strangely around us, it was not difficult to project suspicion onto them. And with my father gone, I lost my reasons for moving on to whatever the Trees and Seeds had planned for us. That's why I voted in favor of Bleeder construction.

We were so short-sighted. It was easy for us to mistrust the other species simply because we had a hard time communicating with them.

As the threat from the mofangs developed, it became clear that they hated the Bleeder as much as my father did. I once overheard a conversation between Cecil and Rookoh, and Rookoh's poor English lead me to believe he wanted to harm my father. But as you all know, Rookoh was instrumental in helping all of us survive.

If you reconstruct the timeline, you'll see that the mofangs had no plan to destroy us or the other species until construction started on the Bleeder. We chose to make a decision for ourselves, and we failed to anticipate how that choice would affect others. The mofangs, the villeins, the arai--none of them were going to move forward if we hobbled our Tree. Unfortunately, the mofangs chose a violent solution, but the good side--if there is one--is that that exonerates them in the murder of my father. He was fighting for the very thing they wanted: the ability to move on.

Please don't misunderstand me. What the mofangs did was unforgivable, but it was done in desperation, and they would have avoided that path entirely if my father had remained alive. Who, then, stood to gain the most if he died?

Cecil came to my house the day before my father died and was very aggressive toward him. (Don't worry, I won't repeat your words.) Suffice it to say he was not very kind. Cecil was the chief human engineer behind the Bleeder. Even before we put it's construction to a vote, he had all the plans ready.

Why? Why was he so invested in a potentially doomed project? I'll tell you why: Emma and Scarlett. Nobody in this community has been more vocal about the life they left behind than Cecil. He would do anything to reunite himself with his long lost wife and daughter, even if it meant damning us all in the attempt.

With all his southern charm, Cecil shared his plan and defended it every chance he got. He became completely confident that the motion to begin construction would pass, but then my father started speaking out, and I imagine that Cecil felt like he was losing his family all over again.

After we swapped here, though, Cecil surprised me with a memory--a letter written by my father that my father had kept secret. Of all the people in Hunrath, my father trusted Cecil with that memory. Not me. Not anyone else. Cecil. Even with their many disagreements, they still had an understanding that reached beyond their personal beliefs. So far as I could tell, Cecil hadn't been anywhere near the mine when I father was killed, so I stopped believing he was responsible.

But if not Cecil--who? Who in this entire town could harbor enough hate to kill someone that the Tree had deemed worthy to live? Who else needed the Bleeder to be completed?

It was the same man who convinced us all that the mofangs had it in for us: Mayor Sims.

Many of you will remember how fervently Mayor Sims pushed for the Bleeder in the lead-up to the final vote. He believed wholeheartedly in that project. In fact, as Mayor Janssen revealed to me, it was Mayor Sims who made a formal request to Cecil to draw up plans for the Bleeder. He, too, must have seen my father as an obstructionist. I don't believe he was as tied to his former life as Cecil, but he surely was the most ambitious man I knew. I imagine he had visions of glory when he thought of the Bleeder: Benjamin Sims, the man who saved us all from annihilation and returned us to Earth.

Eventually it became clear that the mofangs intended to inflict massive harm, and Mayor Sims began to soften his rhetoric. He was loud and outraged and anti-mofang so long as it put Hunrath in a better position, but then he realized his plans were going to doom us all. He called an emergency town meeting, but he never attended. I was with many of you as we searched for him. His body was quickly found in the southern mine, clearly the victim of foul play, and it only made sense that it was the work of the mofangs. Plus there was a war on, so it was impossible for us to consider any additional possibilities.

But as I said at the beginning, I have finally had time to process everything that happened. If the mofangs were innocent of harming any human beings, then who killed Mayor Sims? Did they also kill my father, or did they know who did? The answer came from an unlikely source: our very own Mayor Janssen.

Like many of you, I was guilty of judging Josef for his early retreat to the cryochamber in Maray. I was worried about saving precious lives while he was worried about preserving books, papers, and artifacts. When I inspected the pods he filled with his wares, I didn't recognize most of it even though I had served as mayor for a short time. When we finally arrived here, I personally assisted Josef in emptying those pods and organizing their contents. I'm so glad I did because I found the most crucial part of this increasingly confusing puzzle.

I didn't do much snooping during my run as mayor, but Josef did, and under Mayor Sims' desk he found a single word scribbled on a scrap of paper: Mine. While most of us probably would have thrown it away, Josef's record-keeping intuition led him to store it away until I came upon it. Imagine my surprise when I realized the note was written by someone who had helped me tremendously after Mayor Sims' passing: his secretary Dana.

It didn't take much deduction from there to understand what had happened. Dana was with my father when he was crushed in that cave-in. Dana arrived late to the emergency town council meeting that Mayor Sims' failed to attend. And Dana stuck with Mayor Sims all the way when it came to the Bleeder project.

Mayor Sims was not innocent in all of this. He conspired together with Dana to injure my father. Their intention was not to kill him but to raise suspicions about the mofangs. Unfortunately for them, their flawed reasoning led to the death of one of Hunrath's greatest men. After his death, they kept their shared secret and moved forward with the Bleeder.

However, when Mayor Sims learned of the gravity of the situation with the mofangs, he began to doubt the efficacy of his plan. After all, we couldn't return to Earth if there were no Bleeder. The Tree was fully mature, and Cecil had not yet finished his gigantic swapping device. Enter Dana, who didn't give a damn. When she learned of the planned emergency meeting, she wrote a short note and left it for Mayor Sims. He met her in the mine where we found his body. This time, however, death was not an accident. Dana took his life to save the Bleeder.

You may be wondering at this point how I was able to deduce so many specifics, and you may also be wondering where Dana is now. Don't worry, I haven't done anything to her. But, together with Cecil, I confronted her this morning with the facts I gathered and the suspicions I held. Some things she confirmed--others she corrected--and in the end it was clear she didn't know what to do anymore. The mofang threat is gone, and there's no hope of returning to Earth. Instead of facing you all tonight, she chose to run.

Some of you will think that's not fair. After all, Cecil and I aren't judge and jury for the entire town. But we thought it was important to confront her first. After all, we have all been given a new life here, and it's not like she can do much harm on her own. I leave it to you to decide if there will be any formal prosecution in her absence.

I am content to know that I finally know the truth. I have never missed anyone as much as I miss my father. He was my last link to the life we left behind. But it's also because of him that we came to Hunrath at all. I know I, along with the mofangs, would have preferred that none of this had happened. There would be less death on both sides, and we still would have ended up here. But we're here now, and we'll probably be here for the rest of our lives. Let's make the most of it.

We owe it to John Farley.


End file.
